Beyond Performance: Racial Prejudice and Whites’ Mistrust of Government

Political Behavior - Scholars have argued that racial policy beliefs contributed to a decline in public trust among white-Americans, but this effect waned over time as racial policies left the...     

Correction to: Beyond Performance: Racial Prejudice and Whites’ Mistrust of Government

Political Behavior -     

Parliament without Government: The Belgian Parliament and the Government Formation Processes of 2007–2011

Parliamentary systems are characterised by strong links between the executive and the legislature. While the importance of executive–legislative relationships is well-known, the extent to which executive dominance affects parliamentary behaviour is hard to grasp. This study uses the recent institutional crises in Belgium to study parliamentary behaviour in the absence of a government with full powers. Cabinet formation in Belgium has proved to be protracted in recent years, leading to long periods of government formation in both 2007–2008 and 2010–2011. Such circumstances provide a unique comparison between normal situations of parliament in the presence of government, and exceptional situations of prolonged periods of caretaker government. In particular the article looks at three aspects of parliamentary behaviour that are usually linked to executive–legislative relations: legislative initiatives, voting behaviour and party unity. The general hypothesis is that prolonged periods of government formation gave parliamentarians more opportunities to influence the legislative process and more (ideological) freedom. The results show a nuanced picture: parliament became more pro-active, the salience of the government–opposition divide declined, while party unity remained as strong as ever. It is concluded that government formation processes did not lead to drastic changes in the legislative–executive relationship, but rather permitted a modest correction to the extremely weak position of parliament.     

The US Government and the Italian coup manqué of 1964: the unintended consequences of intelligence hierarchies

In the summer of 1964, Italian security forces and the President of the Republic attempted to remove the US-backed Italian center-left government. The attempt did not succeed, but the threat to do so was used to curtail the government’s reformist program. This article shows that the State Department and the CIA misunderstood the plans of the Italian President and security officers, dismissing the possibility of a forceful removal of the center-left, despite having a long-standing hierarchical relationship with Italian intelligence. US officials failed because of poor analytic tradecraft and because of two unintended consequences of international intelligence hierarchies: an excessive reliance on liaison over penetrations and the increased freedom of maneuver of Italian intelligence when faced with multiple, competing principals.     

Tragedy of the Fiscal Common?: Fiscal Stock Externalities in a Leviathan Model of Federalism

The paper deals with vertical tax competition between self-interested governments in a dynamic environment. In a federation, competition between the federal and the state governments arises when tax sources are not separated but pooled. Since dynamic inefficiencies will be stressed, the focus is on fiscal stock externalities rather than on flow externalities. The paper shows that the Leviathans in a federation tax the fiscal common resource more extensively than the single Leviathan in a unitary state. Furthermore, the positive impact of political stability on public consumption of the fiscal common will be discussed.     

Pedagogisation of nation identity through textbook narratives in China: 1902–1948

How to construct a national collective identity in a diversified population becomes a challenge for many nation states. Focusing on the tension between diversity, citizenship and national identity, this article adopts the lens of the pedagogical state to analyse national identity construction in Chinese political education textbooks published between 1902 and 1948. The purpose of this research was to explore the pedagogical mechanisms with which the textbook narratives accommodate the tensions of diversity in a culturally heterogeneous population and transmit a newly invented national identity (‘the Chinese nation’, Zhonghua minzu) to the masses. Two general rationales of persuasion are identified in the textbooks: narrative of origin and narrative of promise. Framing the analysis in China's citizenship project by the state, this study argues that the textbooks lead the general public into a citizenship identity contract on the grounds of the two rationales.     

Public Service Motivation: A Test of the Job Attraction–Selection–Attrition Model

ABSTRACT

Public service motivation (PSM) research suggests that PSM influences employee sector choice, yet relatively little research examines how time moderates this relationship. In this research we examine public service motivation among private and public sector lawyers. Using survey data that measure sector of employment at multiple time periods, we investigate the stability of the relationship between individual reward orientations and sector employment choice over time. Our findings suggest that while PSM may not clearly predict the employment sector of a respondent's first job, it does increase the likelihood that a respondent's subsequent job is in the public sector.     

Delegation without Agency Loss? The Use of Performance Contracts in Danish Central Government

Performance contracts entered between ministerial departments and their agencies are used throughout the Danish central government. The article analyzes the use of performance contracting in 2005. The analysis draws on transaction cost theory and actor-centered institutionalism, stressing the bargaining aspect of hierarchy and the importance of economic and political transaction costs. The analysis shows considerable variation in the content of performance demands. Ministries with different organizational designs use contracts in markedly different ways and agencies with a strong interface to individual citizens and businesses are more likely to meet demands regulating policy delivery and service levels. Further, contracts contain substantive clauses, the terms of which are largely assessable. It also shows that performance contracts only rarely specify demands related to cost efficiency within agencies. Many of these results are statistically significant, even though a general point is the wide variation in the implementation of performance contracts between individual ministries.     

Government accountability and voting choice in Italy, 1990–2008

Between 1996 and 2008 Italy has experienced four government alternations in as many consecutive elections. It could be argued that after the dramatic party change that occurred in the early 90s the Italian system is in a state of constant flux and voters appear rather bewildered. This paper presents an opposite argument, showing that voters' choice reflects the greater importance of valence politics – performance, the economy – acting as a cue to voting behaviour, interacting with a long-term political predisposition. In turn, this promotes parties' responsiveness and accountability since the overall performance of a government – even of a coalition government – appears as a goal to be shared by all partners, under the threat of defeat for all. The analysis is carried out employing the Italian National Elections Studies series.     

Government Alternation and Legislative Party Unity: The Case of Italy, 1988–2008

The large literature on legislative party unity identifies the confidence relationship, i.e. the threat of being voted out of office and losing agenda setting powers, as well as cabinet membership, as two crucial institutional sources of party discipline. However, by focusing on the dramatic change in the Italian political system following the 1994 election, the article shows that the impact of these factors on party unity (and the direction of this impact) hinge crucially on the possibility of government alternation rather than mere cabinet turnover. This is illustrated by an index of party unity that explicitly focuses on the behaviour of individual MPs derived from a roll-call analysis of the Italian Chamber of Deputies during the period 1988–2008.     

Identity,Social Exclusion and Perceived Performance of Local Government — Evidence from Urban China

As a product of China’s planned economy, the state-run hukou system has dramatically influenced national and social management. However, hukou identity often results in social exclusion and alienation of outsiders. This study explores how hukou identity affects urban residents’ perception of local government performance. The least-square method (OLS), ordered-logit regression, and propensity score matching method (PSM) are applied to test our hypothesis. We found that hukou identity has a significant impact on perceived performance of local government. Specifically, non-locals’ perceived performance is lower than that of native locals, but there is no apparent distinction between new locals’ perceived performance and native locals through hukou conversion. Furthermore, hukou identity’s influence on perception of local government performance has individual heterogeneity. Here, the opinions of highly educated residents coincide due to hukou identity. Beginning with the unique heterogeneous social structure in urban China attributable to hukou system, this study provides a new way to understand residents’ complicated political psychology in urban China.

     

Levels of Value Integration in Federal Agencies' Mission and Value Statements: Is Open Government a Performance Target of U.S. Federal Agencies?

The Barack Obama administration advanced open government initiatives to make federal administration more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. Yet a question remains whether federal administrators took notice. This article examines changes in the extent to which U.S. federal agencies have integrated the three core principles of open government—transparency, public participation, and collaboration—into their performance planning. By analyzing 337 annual performance plans of 24 major federal agencies from fiscal years 2001 to 2016, the authors found that, overall, the level of integration of open government into performance planning has been trending higher since the early 2000s. During the Obama presidency, integration initially rose sharply but later declined. Findings also show that agencies' stated core values regarding open government are not consistently integrated into their performance plans. The implications of these findings for incorporating democratic‐constitutional values into holistic performance management are considered.     

Performance of Public–Private Partnerships and the Influence of Contractual Arrangements

This article seeks to answer two research questions: does public-private partnerships (ppp) live up to its promises to government? How do contractual arrangements affect ppp performance? We propose a conceptual framework to evaluate ppp performance by comparing actual project outcomes to government goals in initiating the partnerships, and to explore how a set of contractual arrangements affect the ppp performance on each identified goal. The framework is applied to a comparative case analysis of highway ppp experiences in the commonwealth of virginia (us) since the 1990s. The results show that these ppp cases were successful in accessing innovative finance, but their performance was mixed on reducing construction risk and transferring revenue risk. Generally improved over time with later projects, the ppp performance was affected not only by interaction among contractual arrangements –private partner selection, financial arrangements, role division, risk allocation, and project characteristics – but also by authorizing and supportive legislation in the policy domain.     

Opportunism and MPs’ chances of re-election: an analysis of political transformism in the Italian parliament

Public Choice - We identify as political transformists the Italian members of parliament (MPs) who cross the aisle and vote for legislation opposed by their own political group—i.e., MPs who...     

Comparing Radical Right Parties in Government: Immigration and Integration Policies in Nine Countries (1996–2010)

This article investigates the direct influence of radical right parties on immigration and integration policies by comparing the output of 27 cabinets of varying composition in nine countries in the period between 1996 and 2010. A Nationalist Immigration and Integration Policy index has been developed to measure legislative changes with regard to citizenship and denizenship, asylum, illegal residence, family reunion and integration. The comparative analysis of immigration and integration legislation shows that the policy output of cabinets including radical right parties deviates significantly from centre-left and centre cabinets, but does not differ much from that of centre-right cabinets. The quantitative analysis makes clear that although parties matter, radical right parties do not matter in particular. A case by case analysis confirms that the direct impact of radical right parties on policy output has been severely limited by the difficulties these parties face in adapting to public office.